A load of crap from an idle brain

Most of the time, we hardly use about 10-20% of our computer’s resources and the rest 80% odd is wasted.  By being a part of the World Community Grid, a small part of an application runs in the background of your PC thus contributing your computing power to getting results on a lot of projects.

The grid works on projects worldwide like

• Help Cure Muscular Dystrophy – Phase 2

• Influenza Antiviral Drug Search

• Help Fight Childhood Cancer

• The Clean Energy Project

• Nutritious Rice for the World

• Help Conquer Cancer

• Discovering Dengue Drugs – Together

• Human Proteome Folding – Phase 2 Project

• FightAIDS@Home Project

What Grid Computing does is to join together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from years to months. The technology is also more cost-effective, enabling better use of critical funds.

World Community Grid runs on software called BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing, developed at University of California, Berkeley, USA with funding from NSF (National Science Foundation).  It is powered by none other than IBM.

What is World Community Grid?

World Community Grid’s mission is to create the largest public computing grid benefiting humanity. Our work is built on the belief that technological innovation combined with visionary scientific research and large-scale volunteerism can change our world for the better. Our success depends on individuals – like you – collectively contributing their unused computer time to this not-for-profit endeavor.

How can you help?

Donate the time your computer is turned on, but is idle, to projects that benefit humanity! We provide the secure software that does it all for free, and you become part of a community that is helping to change the world. Once you install the software, you will be participating in World Community Grid. No other action must be taken; it’s that simple!

For years, i have been a member of the World Community Grid and have contributed my computer’s resources for the project.  A badge of which is visible on the right side of this post.  My moniker is full2njoy and am part of a team called India.

Go to the World Community Grid website for more information on how you can do your part for this project.

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Intel unveiled the Xeon 7400 family of server processors, code-named Dunnington, including its first six-core design. The range includes three low-voltage versions, whereas the 7300 range had one, and Intel is claiming “the lowest watts-per-core usage of any device in their category”.

It’s the first microprocessor for the mass market that [Intel] has developed almost exclusively at its design centre in Bangalore in a milestone for the research and development of computer hardware in India.

“It’s not just services and software that India is known for but this shows you also can do this kind of complex research and development and product design here in India,” said Praveen Vishakantaiah, president of Intel India.

AMD is trailing Intel at the 45nm level, and its six-core server processor, code-named Istanbul, isn’t expected until next year.

Intel has already benefited from developing chips outside the US. Its lab in Israel came up with the Banias processor used in the original Centrino design for laptops. Intel then abandoned the US-designed high-clock-speed Pentium NetBurst architecture and switched to the new Core Duo design, Yonah. A six-core chip isn’t exactly a novel idea but success should certainly enhance the Bangalore lab’s credibility.

News from: Guardian UK

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IT major IBM on Saturday said it expects revenue from Indian operations to touch USD 1 billion by the end of December, growing at a rate of 39 per cent currently.

“We expect our revenues to reach USD one billion by the end of this calendar year up from 700 million in 2006 driven by strong factors. In the first three quarters of the current financial, the company’s revenue has grown by over 39 per cent,” IBM Vice President (Financial Management) Jesse Green said here.

He said factors like competitive offerings, effective sales force, strong brand name, technology base along with the ability to offer hardware and software combination would contribute to the expected figure.

The USD 1 billion would include revenues from services and solutions provided by the IBM to domestic clients and other global corporates operating in India along with total revenues of IBM Daksh, its business process outsourcing unit.

Last year the company’s India revenue grew by 37 per cent as against 2005, while the CAGR from 2002 to 2006 was over 49 per cent.

“The company, which caters to around 17 industry sectors, experienced broad-base growth during 2002-2006 period in telecom, financial services and Small and Medium Businesses growing at 58 per cent, 34 per cent and 35 per cent respectively,” Green said.

News source: The Indian Express

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India has surprisingly broken into the Top Ten in a much-fancied twice-yearly list of the fastest supercomputers in the world, marking a giant leap in its push towards becoming a global IT power. A cluster platform at Pune’s Computational Research Laboratories (CRL), a Tata subsidiary, has been ranked fourth in the widely anticipated Top 500 list released at an international conference on high performance computing in Reno, Nevada.

It is the first time that India has figured in the Top 100 let alone Top Ten of the supercomputing list. The list, which is usually dominated by the United States, is also notable this time because it has five new entrants in the Top Ten, with supercomputers in Germany and Sweden up there with the one in India.

The fourth-ranking Tata supercomputer, named EKA after the Sanskrit term for one, is a Hewlett-Packard Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system. CRL has integrated this system with its own innovative routing technology and to achieve a 117.9 Teraflop or trillions of calculations per second.

The No. 1 position was again claimed by the BlueGene/L System, a joint development of IBM and the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

While the US is clearly the leading consumer of high power computing systems with 284 of the 500 systems, Europe follows with 149 systems and Asia has 58 systems. In Asia, Japan leads with 20 systems, Taiwan has 11, China 10 and India 9.

The second ranked supercomputer in India, rated 58th in the Top500 list is at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. Others are ranked 152, 158, 179, 336, 339,340 and 371.

Full article here.

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